This chapter focuses on the advantages of going with an open source solution. It looks at application availability, software costs, license management, and other issues that must factor into a decision of whether to adopt open source in your environment.

This chapter is from the book

Open Source Advantages

Before you commit to the adoption of open source, Critical Thinking 101
mandates that you ask the question, "Why?" This section attempts to
answer that question from a variety of perspectives. Open source has impact not
just for developers and in-house IT managers, but also potentially for every
person throughout the value chain of an organization from management to
knowledge workers to suppliers, customers, and partners.

By and large, the effects of open source are advantageous with benefits
ranging from lower costs to simplified management to superior software. These
advantages include the following:

Lower software costs—Open source solutions
generally require no licensing fees. The logical extension is no maintenance
fees. The only expenditures are for media, documentation, and support, if
required.

Simplified license management—Obtain the software
once and install it as many times and in as many locations as you need.
There’s no need to count, track, or monitor for license
compliance.

Lower hardware costs—In general, Linux and open
source solutions are elegantly compact and portable, and as a result require
less hardware power to accomplish the same tasks as on conventional servers
(Windows, Solaris) or workstations. The result is you can get by with less
expensive or older hardware.

Scaling/consolidationpotential—Again,
Linux and open source applications and services can often scale considerably.
Multiple options for load balancing, clustering, and open source applications,
such as database and email, give organizations the ability to scale up for new
growth or consolidate to do more with less.

Ample support—Support is available for open
source—often superior to proprietary solutions. First, open source support
is freely available and accessible through the online community via the
Internet. And second, many tech companies (not the least of which is Novell) are
now supporting open source with free online and multiple levels of paid support.
All open source solutions distributed by Novell are included in support and
maintenance contracts.

Escape vendor lock-in—Frustration with vendor
lock-in is a reality for all IT managers. In addition to ongoing license fees,
there is lack of portability and the inability to customize software to meet
specific needs. Open source exists as a declaration of freedom of
choice.

Unified management—Specific open source
technologies such as CIM (Common Information Model) and WBEM (Web Based
Enterprise Management) provide the capability to integrate or consolidate
server, service, application, and workstation management for powerful
administration.

Quality software—Evidence and research indicate
that open source software is good stuff. The peer review process and community
standards, plus the fact that source code is out there for the world to see,
tend to drive excellence in design and efficiency in coding.

Taking a comprehensive and critical view of open source should raise some
questions as well, regarding drawbacks. There have been several criticisms by
detractors of open source, but most of these can be mitigated or relegated to
myth status. Here’s a short list of possible concerns (each of which are
discussed in subsequent sections):

Open source isn’t really free—"Free, as
in a free puppy" is the adage meaning no up-front costs, but plenty (often
unseen or unanticipated) afterward. Implementation, administration, and support
costs—particularly with Novell solutions—can be minimized and the
reality is that there are still no licensing fees.

There’s no service and support—For some
companies, support is mandatory. More on this later, but open source support
equal to that available for proprietary software is available for the same price
or less.

Development resources are scarce—Linux and open
source resources are actually abundant—the developers can use the same
tools, languages, and code management processes. In reality, the universe of
developers is the largest of any segment. And, with the evolution of Mono (the
open source equivalent to .NET), all of those Windows/.NET developers become an
added development resource for Linux.

Open source is not secure—It might seem to be a
simple deduction of logic to think that the code is available, so anyone can
figure out how to break it. That’s not quite true with the momentum of the
community (especially Linux). Also, the modularity required for distributed
development of Linux and open source also contributes to security with tight,
function-specific, and isolated code segments.

Training is not available—This used to be true, but
not anymore. Available Linux training, for example, has ballooned with
certification courses coming from every major training vendor. Novell has
created multiple levels of Linux certification and integrated training programs.
Check your local bookstore and you’ll see a whole section on Linux and open
source.

All open source is a work-in-progress—True for
some, but not for all. The key components like Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Tomcat
are dominating prime-time Internet with stable, secure, and production-quality
solutions. Some open source offerings are maturing, but they are still workable,
and for the companies that use them (with access to source code), the software
is good enough.